Dire Straits Sahara with Michael Palin

In the heart of the Sahara, national frontiers are often flimsy affairs.

I'm in a no man's land near In Guezzam

on the border between Niger and Algeria.

These chunks of scrap metal

tell me I'm crossing between two of the largest countries in the Sahara.

It's a terrible anticlimax. A scribble in the concrete.

It reminds me of a tombstone.

Maybe that's appropriate - this whole godforsaken area,

haunt of smugglers and bandits, feels like a graveyard.

No point waiting around for customs.

Goodbye, Niger. Hello, Algeria.

It's time to unwind and look around.

Algeria, tenth largest country in the world, is 85% desert,

dangerous desert.

As many have discovered to their cost, driving here is not a right,

it's a test of survival.

The soft sand is treacherous, the temperature scorching...

and failure can be fatal.

The route from the Niger border up into Algeria

is absolutely littered with the bleached carcasses of vehicles

that set out to cross the Sahara and never made it.

It's so bleak and pitiless here

that what might be a routine problem elsewhere,

like running out of fuel, becomes a matter of life and death.

This is where Mark Thatcher went missing.

He was discovered after an enormous rescue operation.

And other people just weren't so lucky.

They paid for their mistakes with their lives.

The desert does weird things to your sense of reality.

As we head north, the shady rocks and cool lakes on the horizon

turn out to be mirages, no more than a trick of the light.

This wholly edible non-mirage of fresh tomatoes

and not-so-fresh tuna, is real enough.

But it's accompanied by, well, a pretty rum coincidence.

I'm writing up my diary, miles from anywhere,

when I bump into the only other Englishman in southern Algeria.

Or rather he, poor man, bumps into us.

The number plate is the first clue.

The lone Mercedes belongs to Tom Sheppard and, no, it isn't a mirage.

Tom Sheppard is something of a legend out here.

He's a 68-year-old ex-RAF test pilot and travels the desert,

writing books, taking photos and getting away from people.

Well, I'm on my own, yeah.

I've come down really from the north of Algeria, from Tunisia,

and I'm going very carefully around the old French tracks.

When you're travelling, what do you survive on?

I had a birthday two days ago,

and I had a really special meal on that one.

Meat and two veg, chilled grapefruit, for goodness' sake,

with a damp kitchen towel,

and the dryness of the air makes evaporation,

and you get cool grapefruit segments.

What more could you ask for?

-Does loneliness worry you?

-It's been more lonely than I expected.

Last session was about eight days

between seeing one human being and seeing the next.

I didn't expect to be that long.

-Does that worry you?

-No, it's just so beautiful to be out there.

You get such a lift from the countryside.

You think, "I've exhausted the pictures I can take,"

and then, next morning, you see... "My God, look at that!"

And so it goes. And that's what the desert has always been for me.

-40 years of it now.

-40 years?

-Yes.

-You've been coming to the Sahara?

-To the Sahara.

It's my lucky 13th visit to Algeria.

We're just going to have some lunch.

Would you like to join us?

It's kind of you, but I've got to be on my way now.

Anyone who can be that busy in a place like this wins my respect!

Maybe it was the tuna.

As Tom hurries south, we head north

into the weird and wonderful Hoggar Mountains -

one of the most bizarre landscapes in the Sahara.

It's like riding through a giant sculpture park.

The hard cores of extinct volcanoes form a panorama

of bluffs, and spires, and pinnacles.

These are young peaks,

their sides scarred by the explosive force of their creation.

The Touareg call this land Atacor,

like something out of Lord Of The Rings.

Next morning. I climb to the top of a 9,000ft mountain

to watch the sunrise.

Because of Algeria's ten-year civil war,

the Hoggar Massif is rarely visited,

which only increases the impact of its beauty.

Down in the dormitory where we spent the night, it's time to pack up.

Our newly acquired sense of peace is about to be shattered.

This is the other face of Algeria -

a modern republic which freed itself from the French,

and is now desperately trying to free itself from Islamic radicals.

But airlines and newspapers can't disguise underlying tensions.

Or the fact that these 21st-century comforts

are paid for by one great stroke of fortune.

This is Algeria's Aladdin's cave -

oil and natural gas fields

that provide 90% of the country's foreign earnings.

They've spawned high-security towns in the middle of nowhere,

like this one at Hassi Massoud.

45 years ago, there was nothing here but desert.

And this amazing transformation

is due to electric pumps working - 24 hours a day, 7 days a week -

to pump water from, sometimes, thousands of feet below the Sahara.

The result is a man-made oasis

and this extraordinary illusion

that, in the middle of the desert, there is no desert.

It's not just like a French provincial town,

but French countryside as well.

These are different cattle from the bony ones in Mali and Niger.

It just shows what can be done to the desert if there's a will -

and a petrochemical industry - to back it up.

A few miles from where they first discovered the oil

that so changed Algeria's fortunes,

there is another frontier.

On the other side of it, an even richer country.

This lonely tree represents the border between Algeria and Libya.

And apart from being one of the most spectacular frontiers in the world,

it's also one of the friendliest,

because people from Algeria and people from Libya come here,

sit under the tree and take tea.

And I don't want to leave this beautiful spot, but we must,

and cross the border into the sands of Libya.

In Libya, like Algeria, the bulk of the population

clings to the Mediterranean coast.

It was quite a coup to get permission to film here,

and I'm not going to miss a minute of it...

Well, maybe just a minute!

This looks like being one of the longest bus rides of my life.

To all appearances, Libya is a country with plenty of money,

but very few people.

Which is not surprising with the world's third largest oil revenues

to divide amongst a population less than that of London.

In Benghazi, Libya's second city, you can see the layers of history.

An Italian colonial palazzo, next to a mosque,

now houses one of the committees

which run the great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya.

It feels sleepy, but 60 years ago this coastline

was one of the great Second World War battlefields.

The British garrison in Tobruk has more to contend with than just Germans and Italians.

Choking sandstorms are part of the daily round,

but they don't interfere with the real job - to destroy the enemy.

It's the most tremendous battle. It was a real turning point.

We mustn't forget. If you forget your history,

it comes back and hits you!

Over the last few years,

Lady Avril Randall has organised regular reunions for Desert Rats and their relatives.

Today, they're at Tobruk. Survivors, now in their 80s,

remember what it was like to be trapped here.

There were no girls, no bars, no...

it was just desert and to spend from the age of 20, 21, 22

in that sort of environment, I hate it.

Food?

Well, it was corned beef, bully beef in one form or another.

We were down to about a cup of water a day or so

and that was for everything.

And yet...and yet the surprising thing was none of us grew beards.

PIPER STARTS TO PLAY

Highlight of the reunion is floating a wreath into the harbour

these men defended so, so long.

If they'd lost this supply line,

the Allied army in Africa would have faced defeat.

There was nothing inside the garrison at all.

Only ammunition and men...

They had to bring all our food... all our supplies up

and get it in here somehow.

Rommel said that the desert was a tactician's paradise

and a quartermaster's nightmare.

And that was the fact. It was like a naval battle at sea,

with the tanks, great fleets of tanks here and there.

If the petrol or ammunition didn't get there, you were in trouble.

There were 25,000 of us in here -

and that's where we won the name rats, you know.

The Haw-Haw used to say, "Come out of your holes, you rats!"

We did, eventually. We came out a bit too quick for him, eventually.

Eyes left.

It's unlikely than any of these Desert Rats will see Tobruk again.

It's a long way and they're not getting any younger.

Today is probably the last time they'll celebrate

those who gave Hitler the first bloody nose of the war,

one from which he never recovered.

What's been the high point of this trip for you?

I think the last march past of the old Rats

with the bugler and the piper

and the Rats of Tobruk Association standard.

Desert Rats, do your duties! Dismissed!

The boys can now march off into the sunset.

APPLAUSE You'll never see them again.

Modern Libya has often cut itself off from the West,

but over 2,000 years ago, it was an integral part of Europe.

First the Greeks, then the Romans were drawn to this fertile land

between the sea and the Sahara

and built some of their grandest cities here.

Cyrene was a bustling metropolis 500 years before Christ.

It had its own port, Apollonia.

Staggering, but totally deserted.

But then the modern towns are deserted as well.

Is there some national emergency we've not been told about?

Is it National Stay Indoors Day?

Where are all the Libyans?

Apart from our driver, everyone seems to have gone...

..and taken everything with them.

Picnic time and despite the fact that there are big cities -

we've seen Tobruk and Benghazi, we're off to Tripoli -

Libya is largely desert, so it's picnic time in the desert.

Here's my packed lunch. It's enormous.

I can't actually tell what it is because everything's in Arabic.

All the signs are in Arabic as well,

although a lot of people here speak English.

Could be lunch, could be a large hat.

It is lunch! There we go.

Now...

Nice little well-sealed box here...

Ah!

Don't think it's very typically Libyan.

Got some cold chips.

The shortage of water is clearly a problem for Libya,

but Colonel Gaddafi has an impressive answer to it.

These concrete sections will form part of his man-made river project,

bringing underground water 1,000 miles from desert to coast.

It's one of the world's most ambitious engineering schemes.

1,700 years ago, water was no problem.

This land was known as the breadbasket of Rome.

Rich enough from exports of wheat and oil

to boast the most magnificent city of North Africa - Leptis Magna.

It still gives off a powerful sense of the brute strength of Rome.

These halls were built by Septimus Severus,

an African who became Roman Emperor

and died in the north of England.

It wasn't just Septimus that ended up in England.

In 1827, the ruler of Tripoli sent 35 columns

and other assorted features as a present to King George IV.

A bit of Leptis Magna can still be found

off the A329 near Virginia Water.

I'm told the amphitheatre at Leptis Magna

has the best acoustics in North Africa.

Well, there's only one way to find out.

# I'm leaning on the lamp-post at the corner of the street

# Until a certain little lady comes by

# Oh, me, oh, my I hope that little lady passes by

# She's absolutely wonderful and absolutely marvellous

# And lots of people ask me just why I'm standing on the corner

# Of the corner of the street until a certain little lady passes by. #

Get off, get off!

As we leave Libya, I get the feeling that, despite being generous hosts,

the Libyans are deeply mistrustful of people with cameras,

something which was never a problem in my next destination.

Less than 100 miles from the Libyan border,

we're in this arid, almost lunar landscape, of southern Tunisia.

And it's so arid and uncongenial here

that, for the last 700 years, people have lived in caves underground.

And, believe it or not, I do know this place.

I was crucified here 23 years ago for The Life Of Brian,

and I've always wanted to come back because it is so unforgettable,

a place that remains in your mind.

There aren't many people who can say they've gone back

to the place they were crucified!

I'm going to see what it's like.

The crosses are gone, but El Hadej hasn't changed much.

It remains an underground town

and though the authorities try to move people into houses,

there are those who, by tradition and inclination,

prefer to live and work below the surface.

The older generation of troglodytes

can't see why they should have to move from their caves.

One answer is to cash in on the curiosity value

and become hoteliers.

-Bonjour.

-Bonjour, sir. I'm Michael. Beautiful.

This is where you live?

-Your house?

-Yes.

-Mmm.

Nice and silent and cut off from the world.

-You have a room?

-OK.

-Ah, yes, OK, I'll see the room.

Thank you. In here?

Ah, merci. Apres vous.

-HE SPEAKS ARABIC

-My host was very keen to point out

that living underground made very good sense

as the caves are warm in winter and cool in summer.

I think tea's made.

Yeah, that's what the...

My own Arabic being limited, I rely on the one word I know

and repeat it as often as possible.

Thank you. Shokran. Shokran. Shokran.

Shokran. Shokran.

My little Arabic that I know.

Some nuts as well. Thank you.

We've been right round the Sahara and the one thing

that doesn't change is the tea.

The method of making the tea,

it seems to be the same in every country we've been to -

From Morocco to Mali to Mauritania to Tunisia.

Good! Thank you.

Shokran. Very nice.

Cheer up, Brian, you know what they say.

Some things in life are bad, they can really make you mad.

Other things just make you swear and curse.

# When you're chewing on life's gristle

# Don't grumble, give a whistle

# And this'll help things turn out for the best

# And always look on the bright side of life... #

WHISTLED ACCOMPANIMENT

# Always look on the light side of life... #

Come on, Brian, cheer up!

# Always look on the bright side of life

# Always look on the bright side of life... #

In southern Tunisia, where the desert meets the sea,

there's an island called Djerba which hangs on to old traditions

as tenaciously as the troglodytes of El Hadej.

In their case, it's catching octopus in Greek vases.

The fishermen may look as if they're dressed by Dolce & Gabbana,

but their technique is pre-Roman.

The pots are strung out on a line,

and, unfailingly, between November and March every year,

the octopus obligingly climb into them.

Yes, oui. That's it.

What do they look like? Let me have a look.

Ah, there it is! Wow!

You want it?

That's one, so...

-SHOUTING IN ARABIC

-Get back in there.

They're all over the place.

OK, well, there's two.

One's about to crawl up your leg,

but there's that one - get back in!

Thank you. There.

Not much good at octopus-wrangling, but I'm learning. Get in there.

Oh, my God! Another.

Getting them out of the sea's the easy bit,

keeping them on board is a little bit...

Sad... They love living in these little bowls, these urns.

There's a synchronicity between the octopus and the urn.

And here we are, ripping them out...

So I'm not going to have any more to do with this.

Thank you. Start the Octopus Protection League.

Djerba claims to be the island of the lotus-eaters,

to which Ulysses and his weary sailors came

to be seduced by the narcotic delights of the lotus.

There's no lotus left, but Djerba still manages to seduce

thousands of foreigners every year.

ARABIC POP SONG

Tourism is now the biggest business in Djerba.

I walk round the souk with El Hajj,

who runs one of the better shops in town.

There were hardly any tourists when he was a boy,

but he now relies on them for 70%-80% of his business.

You think tourism can have a bad effect, an adverse effect?

Of course, yeah, it didn't bring only good thing,

-it brought a lot of money, but we have other problems.

-What problems?

Well, we have a lot of our young people who have changed,

they are not practising their religion any more,

they are, er...running after, I don't know how to...

-Seduced by the money?

-Yeah, exactly.

We have these... I don't know if I want to talk about it,

but the sex tourism, we have a lot of old ladies,

coming here to find a young friend. This is not good.

That's not good, of course, it's one of the bad sides.

You find sometimes some homosexuals

or they are... You just go to the beach

and you see that there are people staying there,

waiting for an...an old lady or...

We also have a lot of young people,

they don't want to work cos they have a German or an Italian -

I don't know, I don't want to say... but old ladies, they are...

they leave their husbands or don't have one,

they come to find a friend here.

They pay him. So that is one of the bad sides of tourism.

But Tunisia, lacking the oil reserves of Libya and Algeria,

has to do all it can to make tourists welcome.

They have been greatly helped by the Romans who, at El Jem,

left the third biggest amphitheatre they ever built.

At Dougga, temples overlook a purpose-built brothel

and, next door to it, a masterpiece of imperial plumbing.

The Romans weren't bashful about bodily functions.

This is a public lavatory in the truest sense of the word,

in that there are 12 little toilets here and it was a communal lavvy.

You went in - they were called furaci - and you paid one,

believe it or not, one as to come in here,

which was a tiny little coin.

They would sit here, a group thing.

You'd discuss the weather,

what's going on, politics, acting, life, architecture, digestion...

and there'd be water running round this runnel here.

It's very immediate, so you can your hands there...

bring the water up and then put your hand under there and washed the bits.

It was cold water, so it must have been a bit of a freezing jobbie,

but the Romans were oddly civilised in this insanitary way, I think.

Not just Romans, but Phoenicians, Turks, Greeks, even Normans,

have all contributed to Tunisia's rich racial mix.

The most influential were the Arabs.

One of their great monuments is in Monastir.

The locals never stop talking about when Monty Python came.

The more comfortable parts of the film that weren't done on crosses,

happened here in Monastir.

And this is the Ribat, which is a very old building,

probably about 1,300 years old.

This is where most of the scenes of Life Of Brian were done.

I'm trying to remember it because it all looks tidy and neat now.

It's coming back to me now.

I think the stoning scene, and we were all dressed up as...

Women were not allowed to go to stonings.

Women weren't allowed to go, so we all played women with beards.

Come on, who threw that?

HIGH VOICES: She did! DEEPER VOICES: He did! Him!

-Was it you?

-Yes.

-Right...

-Well, you did say Jehovah.

Now, this does bring it back.

The tower Graham Chapman ran up, got to the top, the stairs ran out

and he's rescued, highly improbably, by a flying saucer and goes on.

I think we must have just taken over this place entirely

for about two months, which seems unlikely.

Up there, where those girls are coming down,

above that, the columns were built

where Pontius Pilate came out and there was the, "Welease Wodewick!"

and, "He ... higher than any in Wome," and all that was done there.

It's difficult to tell because we added bits on,

we added sort of great coloured flags...

but I seem to remember coming out above that - above that bit there.

People of Jewusalem...

..Wome is your fwend.

LAUGHTER

A very strange and rather effective moment

where the power of Rome was challenged not by people fighting,

but by people laughing.

That's what moved me about it -

once people laughed at him, there was nothing you could do.

Laughter's a very good weapon, not used enough...

Lying on their backs, laughing,

then he got vewy angry and made a vewy gweat fool of himself.

Silence!

This man commands a cwack legion.

Along the coast from Monastir is the city of Sousse

in which Brian also came to life.

It seems strangely subdued today.

I remember the streets of the old town as the liveliest in Tunisia,

but now they're quiet as the grave.

In the main square, they're already shutting up shop.

The reason, I learn, is that this is the start of Ramadan,

the month every year when Muslims are expected to fast

during daylight hours.

Candy stalls do a roaring trade in anticipation of night-time feasts.

I've heard some people put on weight during the month of fasting.

Now I can understand why.

Tunisia likes to see itself as secular and outward-looking.

It's also the only Islamic country in which it's not compulsory

to observe Ramadan, but most do.

With my friend Moes, I visit a cafe to see how the country

makes the most of the hours of darkness.

Moes orders a chicha, a cigarette the size of a vacuum cleaner.

Charcoal heats honey-flavoured tobacco

and the air is cooled by the water.

Er, do you want to try it?

Yeah, OK, yeah, yeah...

So I just...?

Yeah, it's very nice. It's very relaxing, isn't it?

-Would you normally smoke this?

-Sometimes, especially in Ramadan.

People after eating and everything,

they like to relax, to have a cup of tea and to smoke the chicha.

-Can you smoke during Ramadan, during the day?

-No. Nothing.

No water, no smoking, nothing in your mouth.

-Really? That's very hard.

-Just air, you know.

-Yeah.

What is the worst thing, you know, to be deprived of?

Is it water, is it food, is it smoke?

For me, it's water, for some people, it's food.

It depends, you know, each person... Some people, it's smoking too.

It's the hardest thing for them is to stop smoking for 12 hours.

Does it make people bad-tempered?

Yeah, some people are bad-tempered, but some people are not.

If they are bad-tempered, they're bad-tempered,

Ramadan or not - it's not Ramadan.

Some people say, "I am bad-tempered because it's Ramadan." Not true.

-My excuse!

-Yeah, as an excuse.

Apart from the Arabs, most of those who invaded North Africa

stopped short of the Sahara.

The Romans never crossed it and one of the most famous occupying empires

looked only towards the sea.

They were the Carthaginians and their power base was here.

In fact, the station's called Carthage.

This is the start of my journey to Algeria.

This local train will take me to Tunis Nord,

the main station in Tunis,

-for the Trans-Maghreb Express...

-LAUGHTER

-Excuse me, please, I'm working!

..Which will take me to Algiers.

This line goes through some wonderful stations, Carthage Amilcar, Carthage Presidence,

Carthage Hannibal - great name - Carthage Dermech, Carthage Byrsa.

So five Carthage stations.

Whatever the Romans think, Carthage is not destroyed.

When the Romans left Carthage, they were so fed up

with the Carthaginians that they sowed the fields with salt.

From the main station in Tunis,

it looks easy enough to continue my journey across North Africa,

aboard the Trans-Maghreb Express.

The Arab word Maghreb means the lands of the setting sun -

the lands of the west.

But there are problems ahead.

Tunisia, which I'm leaving, is outward-looking and fairly stable.

Algeria, where I'm going,

has been caught in a spiral of violence since 1992.

Foreign Office advice is unequivocal.

"Security situation remains serious.

"We advise against all holiday and non-essential travel to Algeria."

At first, Algiers seems little different from any other city.

The trains seem to be running on time, there are no porters,

and my hotel, the El Djazair, is rather grand.

It was formerly called the St George and was built in the 1880s

to accommodate all those fashionable Victorians who flocked to Algiers

to benefit from the healthy climate.

No-one flocks to Algiers now.

I can't even leave the hotel without a bodyguard.

Beyond the hotel, we'll be required to travel around Algiers

with a team of the Service de Protection...

This is Eamonn, an ex-marine commando.

The reason that we need this security is that, since 1992,

foreigners in Algeria have been under fatwa

by certain extreme Islamic groups.

Fatwa - same as in the Salman Rushdie case?

The Satanic Verses, yeah.

The result is over 100 foreigners

have been killed in Algeria since then.

I've travelled a bit. As far as I know, no-one's tried to kill me.

I ask Eamonn if this is all strictly necessary.

You're a public figure with a high profile and, frankly,

if I lose you, I lose my job.

Well, I hope we won't be a problem.

ACCORDION MUSIC

On the streets, you could be mistaken for thinking

you were in Lyon or Marseilles.

For 100 years, the French treated Algeria not as a colony,

but as part of France.

As a result, the independence movement was resisted

more fiercely here than anywhere in North Africa.

Said Shitour, a local journalist, is proud of the fight his people put up

and takes me to what was the centre of the struggle -

the heart of Algiers, the Casbah.

As the streets of the Casbah are still a flash point

for violent protest, the local police, the Casbah cops,

have thrown a comprehensive but discreet cordon

around the area for our visit.

So successful is this precaution,

that there's absolutely no-one about.

When someone eventually appears, he's one of the police, regrouping.

But they can't keep out the ghosts of old heroes.

Ali La Pointe was one of the fighters against the French?

-He was in the film Battle Of Algiers in these streets.

-Yes.

-He lived here?

-He lived here with his friends

and all the freedom fighters,

and he was a hero of the Casbah and the Battle of Algiers.

-The resistance was centred on the Casbah?

-Yes.

It was difficult for the French to come in

and get the revolutionaries out of here?

Very, because it's roof to roof, house to house,

-and the people can jump from roof to roof.

-Ah.

-This is the memorial plate in memory of Ali La Pointe.

-What does it say?

In the 8th...October 8th 1957,

Ali La Pointe, with his companions...

spent all day resisting the French paratroopers,

and in the end the French army decide to blow up the house.

He didn't want to give up and he died.

Yeah, the scene where they give them the chance to come out.

-They say, "We'll give you one hour!"

-Yeah, yeah.

And then they blew the place up.

What do you think Ali La Pointe and these people achieved?

Freedom. Independence for us, the generation who came after 1962.

Now this place became a kind of training centre

for girls of the Casbah to teach them how to make good couscous.

That's a bit of a sort of the sublime to the ridiculous.

The Casbah sounds like it's coming to life. Things are happening.

I begin to forget security and enjoy myself.

There's lots of character to these claustrophobic alleyways.

-Funny girl.

-Yeah, yeah.

Said shows me some of the Casbah's hidden gems,

like the mosque of Sidi Abderrahmane,

a 15th-century holy man and patron saint of the city.

A visit to his tomb is said to be particularly effective for women.

SHE SINGS IN ARABIC

-These are some women.

-Yeah.

Some women pray in here for Allah to give us more...

to be merciful and to give us more rain, because in Algiers

we have a big problem, there is no water.

Ironically, the prayers worked only too well.

Within two weeks of our visit,

hundreds were drowned in Algeria's worst flooding for years.

By Saharan standards,

the people who live in Algiers look quite prosperous.

The oilfields see to it that the street markets are well-stocked.

Look at the size of those brassieres!

-A couple of footballs in there.

-Yeah.

I might just pick up a couple.

Next morning, it's time to leave Algier La Blanche,

the White City, as the French called it.

There's a train to Oran.

I was warned the line is dangerous, so I seek professional advice.

Is it OK to travel on the train?

Yes, there are security - not problem in train.

Yes, yes. It's not problem in train.

You can go in at Oran or Constantine.

Security, it's not problem.

-OK.

-OK.

-OK. How do you speak English so well?

Is it something they teach you on Algerian railways?

It's my English of school,

-but when we like English, we practise it.

-Really?

-So what is your job here?

-My job is master of the station.

-Stationmaster?

-Yeah.

-Not station mistress - stationmaster.

Yeah. I am the first lady in Algeria to run a station.

That is very clean, I notice.

-Yeah, it's...

-Absolutely tidy.

It's a woman who is master.

And it's a policeman who's following us.

The train is about to leave and it's time to say farewell to Said,

who's shown me that despite the dire warnings,

the people of Algiers could not have made us feel more welcome.

-We'll see you soon.

-Inshallah. Goodbye.

As we pull out, everything looks normal enough,

but in Algeria it's never wise to be complacent.

The Algiers-Oran line does have a history,

and I'm certainly not allowed to ride it unprotected.

OK?

Is there a security problem on this line?

Yes, there is, and there has been over the last ten years.

This is an area to the south of Algiers

known as the Triangle of Death.

We're approaching Blida,

and this has been the most bombed railway line in the world

over the last ten years.

What sort of form does that take?

Do people attack the train, ambush?

This train here has been bombed,

it has been stopped by people pulling the communication cord,

which is why you won't find a communication cord now.

What was the problem, people were...?

Well, yeah, you'd get confederates of terrorist groups

who'd come on to the train, masquerading as passengers.

They'd pull the cord at a certain moment, the train would stop

and the terrorists would come on to the train

and commit acts of cruelty and barbarism.

What - they'd take people's lives?

-Yes, they would.

-On the train?

-Yeah.

In awful circumstances that we really don't want to go into.

Now, over the last couple of years,

you'll find, as you go along, there is a major security presence,

and you will not really run the same risks. Or so we're told.

-Yeah, yeah. But you don't see many foreigners on a...

-No.

In my consideration,

you're probably the first foreigner on this line in the last ten years.

I have to say, so far, it seems to be fine.

The train left on time, everyone's friendly.

The countryside is sort of farmland.

I wouldn't want to put people off coming to Algeria

because we've had no problems really.

I know we were guarded, but I don't feel there's been any hostility.

No, there's no hostility from the general population -

they are very welcoming people as you would no doubt have seen.

Even at stations like Chlef, where violence has been rife,

there's an unthreatening air of ordinariness.

But the fact remains that, in ten years of terror and counterterror,

100,000 people have been killed.

One thing you won't actually be able to see on our journey

is the armed guards.

We have a heavy security presence,

both from Algiers and then a town called Chlef where we stopped.

They changed the guard round,

and 18 members of the Gendarmerie Nationale, with AK-47s, came aboard.

They won't want to be filmed - it's dangerous for them -

but the train is bristling with guards looking after us.

Bonjour. Merci.

-Merci.

-Merci.

The train used to be exotically known

as the Algiers-Casablanca Express.

But tensions between Algeria and Morocco over security

have closed the railway border and now the train terminates at Oran.

The army can go home now - I'm someone else's responsibility.

-Great station.

-Absolutely beautiful.

-Mooresque.

-Is this Oran an important city?

-Yes, the second important... second city of Algeria.

-Right, OK.

Now, where do we head? Off, down here?

Straight into the centre of the town.

Oran, like Algiers, is still steeped in French influence.

Bare-breasted northern maidens gaze down from the opera house,

sharing the square with a carved likeness of Arab nationalist hero,

Abdelkader. The confusion reflects my own feelings

as I near the end of the journey.

This is the last big city on my journey and you can't

get much further west in Algeria than this,

so I've got to think hard about how to get back home.

I'm able to bypass the closed border with Morocco

by taking a roundabout ferry route into Ceuta.

From there, it should be easy enough

to get back across the Straits to Europe.

SPANISH GUITAR

Ceuta is a curiosity,

a slice of Spain clinging to the coast of Africa.

It's surrounded by Morocco.

In the same way that Spain wants Gibraltar,

Morocco wants Ceuta. But there's no sign of Spain parting with it.

Indeed, this monument in the Plaza Africa,

commemorates a Spanish invasion of Morocco.

The Spanish presence makes Ceuta a magnet

for those wanting to get out of Africa.

High on a hill above the town

is one of the outlying defences of Fortress Europe -

a holding centre for immigrants built and run by the European Union.

Gracias!

It's bright, clean and modern, and people here can't wait to get out.

There are nearly 400 men, women and children in the centre,

but only 45 applications have been processed in the last six months.

The inmates are restless, but they're not giving up,

not after the risks they've taken to get this far.

-And where have you come from? You've come from?

-From Nigeria.

-And how did you get here?

-Through the Sahara Desert.

-On a vehicle?

-With leg.

-On foot? You walked through the Sahara?

-Yeah, yeah.

-How long did that take?

-Take me almost one year.

How did you get into Ceuta?

Into Ceuta, I passed through Sahara, got to Morocco, on to this place.

-How did you get here from Morocco?

-From Morocco...

Because this is a fortress...

Passed through the barbed wire with a fisher boat.

-I came by the boat.

-Came by boat?

-Yeah.

-That brings you on to shore here?

-Yeah.

-Did you have to pay a lot of money to get here?

-Yeah, for the boat we paid about 1,500 to reach here.

-1,500...?

-Dollars, yes.

-Dollars?

-Yeah.

-US dollars?

-Yeah.

At the narrowest point of the Straits of Gibraltar,

only nine miles separate these people from their goal.

I'm lucky - I can cross the Straits in an hour,

on a scheduled ferry, in broad daylight,

but thousands of Africans will pay to be brought over

in unsuitable boats at the dead of night.

Belinda Braithwaite, who has a house close to where they land,

knows many will never reach Europe alive.

They tend to come across when it's calm, in the middle of the night.

But you can suddenly get a squall,

and they're halfway across, too many people in the boat.

None of them can swim, and they don't have any life jackets,

so the boat capsizes and they, poor things, are thrown into the sea.

Do they have any sort of navigation?

Presumably they've got to come along here with no lights or lamps?

Well, it's always at night,

and some of the worst casualties happen when it's foggy,

because it appears the more unscrupulous skippers say,

"Well it's 200 yards over there - jump out here,"

and, in fact, it's more like a mile.

So the poor people find that they're out of their depth and can't swim.

Imagine if you're a pregnant woman thrown over the side of a boat,

you don't stand a chance, so...

When they do get ashore, this is what...?

The boat has been wrecked,

hurled against the rocks, there's great holes in it.

-What happens when they get ashore?

-They disappear in the pine forests.

But if they've just got out of a boat

or they've had to swim the last bit,

their clothes are sopping wet, so they tend to bring with them...

-There - a little plastic...

-Is that something from...?

It looks like it's been bound up to keep it waterproof.

And they would keep some dry clothes in there.

You see here the fellow's clothes that he's actually taken off.

They take these off because they're sodden. They have clothes with them?

-Shoes, things, and his water bottle.

-Someone from Morocco, Mali...

Then he'll quickly get away before he's spotted.

So there's clothes all over these dunes, scattered about?

I come across them miles...

When at last I reach Gibraltar,

the flags are flying and day-trippers fill the streets.

But there's something different in the air - a smell of betrayal.

May I have your leave to secure the fortress, sir?

After nearly 300 years, the unthinkable is happening.

Britain and Spain are discussing joint sovereignty.

Halt!

Who goes there?

-The keys.

-Whose keys?

-Queen Elizabeth's keys.

-Advance, Queen Elizabeth's keys.

The Ceremony of the Keys dates back to the days

when the gates of the citadel were locked every night.

The fortress is secure and all's well, sir.

But how secure is the fortress?

Suddenly, this harmless ceremony seems loaded with significance,

more than just an entertainment.

Will the gates of Gibraltar have to be locked again?

BAND STRIKES UP

When I set out, I always thought of Gibraltar

as the bridge between Europe and Africa.

But now I think for the future that the Sahara

is the bridge from Africa into Europe.

There is a danger in becoming obsessed with our own security.

There may be enemies at the gate,

but locking them out may only create more enemies.

I think the best hope for the future is to look around the gate,

to find out more of how other people live.

After all, this time a year ago, I thought the Sahara was empty.

Whoo!